Medical Malpractice
by Lucillia
Summary: It is up to the B.A.U. to determine if a pair of teenagers who were apprehended at the scene of a recent murder are just a pair of kids who'd stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time or a pair of LARPing thrill killers. As far as Theta Sigma and Koschei are concerned however, they just want to retrieve their stolen TARDIS and get the hell out of there.
1. Prologue: I Killed Her

"So, these two were found at the last crime scene?" Rossi asked as he looked at the monitor that was displaying footage of the interrogation room in which a pair of teenagers in bloody clothing had been left. One of the boys was staring at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, while the other was agitatedly tapping out a peculiar four beat rhythm on the table.

He and his team had recently arrived to assist in the investigation of a string of particularly brutal murders. The two boys that the local LEOs had found looked far too young to fit the tentative profile, but there had been times when he'd been surprised, and children aren't as stupid or innocent as people generally wanted to think they were. They generally didn't think things through or plan something so...elaborate though.

Coming to a decision, he made his way to the interrogation room where the boys had been sitting while the officers tried to find and contact their parents, or barring that, contact someone who would give them permission to interrogate the boys who were obviously minors. Both boys looked to be roughly fourteen years of age. The boy who was tapping on the table who only just looked to have hit puberty had short black hair and pale eyes whose color he hadn't been able to determine on the black and white monitor when the boy briefly looked up at where the camera was hidden almost as if he could sense he was being watched. The other boy whose hair was of a lighter shade had his hair tied back in a short ponytail. The clothes the two boys were wearing were unusual to say the least, and it looked as if some of them had been purchased at a shop that sold period costumes.

The boy who was staring at his hands was wearing a coat that looked like it belonged on the set of a film like Pride and Prejudice, a white ruffled shirt that looked as if it had seen its heyday in the seventies, an honest to god cravat, and had his jeans tucked into a pair of over-sized riding boots. The dark haired boy was wearing a black high-collared cape that looked like it belonged on a B-movie villain over an Eighteenth-century British Army officer's jacket that was much too big for him which was left open to display a black tee shirt that said something rude and somewhat vulgar in Russian, and while he was wearing a pair of modern Nike sneakers, he was also wearing a pair of breeches that looked like they matched the coat and a pair of stockings that were either black or a similarly dark color.

All in all, he didn't know what the clothes said about the children, aside from the fact that they might've been doing that LARPing thing he'd heard about. If that was the case, there was a possibility that rather than having accidentally stumbled on the murder while it was taking place and interrupting the Unsub as it looked like may have happened considering the usual profile for the sort of person who generally committed this sort of crime, the murders may have been part of the boys' fantasy game. That didn't explain the lighter haired boy's current state of near-catatonia though.

When he entered the interrogation room the light haired boy whose hair turned out to be a medium brown did not react to his presence. The dark haired boy turned to him and gave him an annoyed glare that reminded him of a hawk that had had its feathers ruffled despite the fact that the boy's eyes were a soft blue-grey.

"Hello, I'm Special Agent David Rossi, and..." he started, not letting the look unsettle him like it was meant to do. The boy apparently had a tendency to lash out when he was agitated, which was a defense mechanism that could get him into trouble someday if it hadn't already.

"As I told the guards, it was already wounded when we found it." the dark haired boy in red and black said. "Release us so I can clean this...mess off of me. It reeks."

"I'm afraid I can't do that." he said, carefully noting the way the boy had said "it" rather than "she" in reference to the victim. The boy was obviously still playing the game he and his friend had been playing. Probably to distance himself from the incident. "Is there anyone we can contact? Parents? Guardians?"

"With your current level of technology, you won't be able to." the dark haired boy who was apparently the spokesperson for the two since he was the only one who currently seemed to be capable of speech said. "I'm sure someone will be along shortly, if only to pick up the capsule we stole."

He turned to the boy who was staring brokenly at his hands.

"Are you alright?" he asked the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder in order to offer some comfort and possibly get him to talk.

The boy turned to look at him with haunted brown eyes.

"She died," the boy whispered. "I-I killed her. She died."


	2. Chapter 1: Yet Another Day on the Job

Despite its high population and the sizable number of cities that spanned across it melting into the valley where there were even more cities scattered about amongst the rural farmland, the San Francisco Bay Area contained a surprising number of isolated places. In some spots, you could walk a block, turn a corner, and be almost completely secluded out of the sight and hearing of the thousands of people going through their daily lives around you. The sense of isolation could be most keenly felt after dark where in the smaller cities hardly anyone was out and about. After a certain hour, the downtown areas became virtual ghost towns, and the silence of the residential areas were only broken by a wandering animal or the occasional passing car.

The dark haired, dark eyed, barefooted woman in a bloody green tee shirt and jeans who was dragging herself along the dried-up bed of a creek that ran along a picturesque walking trail that ran between a golf course and a quiet neighborhood that had long since turned in for the night trying to escape the inescapable knew there was no hope for her, especially not now. As the man with the deceptively kind smile that she'd thought she could trust only hours earlier approached to finish the job he'd started, a breeze kicked up out of nowhere, and a strange grating, groaning, whining noise echoed through the early morning darkness, seemingly coming from the trail above...

**Later That Morning:**

Agent Derek Morgan hated these briefings, especially because there were usually at least three victims before anyone called them in to help out on the case, and virtually all in question had died horrifically. Someone had to get the Unsubs off the street otherwise they'd keep on killing until the day they died however, and he had signed up for the job. Practically the first thing after he got in that morning had been that briefing. He'd followed his team into the conference room where Garcia put up images that could never be unseen by any of them while Hotch summarized the case.

This particular Unsub had been leaving his victims near walking trails with trinkets that were obviously important to him for some reason laid on the bodies which were covered. Joining in on the speculation as to why the Unsub was doing this, he tuned out Reid's long-winded explanation as to how this case bore certain similarities to a case in an entirely different state twenty years ago. Garcia was looking slightly queasy as always, and turning away from the photos she'd been forced to display as if wishing to unsee the darkness that had been laid bare, no matter how impossible that was, which she knew full well, having been at this job a long time just like him. Despite the conditions of the bodies under the white sheets, they weren't the worst pictures she'd put up during a briefing, not by a long shot.

Eventually, a tentative profile that went beyond the general "Male, possibly in his early thirties..." had been sketched out and the team broke up to gather what they needed for the trip to California where they would be helping the local law enforcement catch their Unsub before he left too much longer a trail of bodies in his wake. He generally kept a bag with a couple changes of clothes, and some toiletries on hand ready to travel. All he would really have to do would be to drive to the airport and board the plane that would be waiting for the team which had rated one of their own due to all of the traveling they had to do, and the fact that they were amongst the very very best in their field with a solve rate that bordered on the impossible for their profession.

On the plane ride over to the small airfield where they would be landing, the entire team went over the files that had been sent over discussing a wide variety of things from the case at hand to each-other's personal lives as they did every trip as they prepared themselves for what was ahead of them. While it was important to focus on the case, it one focused entirely on the darkness that lay in wait, it would chew them up and spit them out before long.

Reid had flicked through the entire file at a near inhuman speed like he usually did, making comments on a variety of things here and there as he did. Rossi watched this routine with an almost paternal indulgence as he usually did as J.J. and Emily quietly conversed in a corner near the back of the plane. Hotch was seated in a spot where he was relatively isolated yet able to watch the rest of the group going over the case file for what was probably the third time for him.

Eventually, the plane landed and the group was met by a representative of the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department who greeted them with the news that another body had been found just that morning and a pair of what could either be suspects or witnesses had been found with it. Shortly after this revelation had been made, the group grabbed their bags and everything else they might need, piled into the SUVs that had been left for them by the San Francisco field office, and followed the man from the Sheriff's department to the city of Clayton which was being rocked by the second murder in the span of a decade.

Clayton was one of the closest places you could get to a small town in an area where Suburban sprawl was slowly eating away the hillsides which had not had subdivisions on them a decade before. The look and feel of the place reflected that, especially the miniscule police station near the library that had the misfortune of housing the two boys who'd been found by the body which had been discovered by a man who'd gone out walking his dog in the early morning hours.

Both boys who were wearing the strangest mishmash of clothing he'd ever seen were covered in blood, and things didn't look too good for them especially since both boys had been rather uncooperative with the police who they'd rather strangely waited for after the man who'd found them had called them on his cell phone. As Rossi went into the room in which the boys were being held in order to get a better idea of who they were and what made them tick, he stayed back and watched on the monitor.

One boy looked shaken, and the other was acting a bit like a typical teenager - arrogant and rude - but there was something...wrong about them. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was off about both the boys and their reactions to the situation they were in, that and they...moved wrong. Considering the fact that the rude one had called the victim an "it", it was possible that the other one who'd been staring at his hands since before the police had arrived at the crime scene if what he'd heard was correct was playing for sympathy. Whether the boys had stumbled upon the victim while they were out committing some other act of criminal mischief or were responsible for the murder as the light haired one claimed he was was up for debate, the fact that the victim had been alive when they ran into her though wasn't however. Both boys had stated it was so, and based on the amount of blood on their clothes, the woman had been bleeding heavily when they had come into contact with her.

The fact that neither boy had tried to get help, but had stayed until law enforcement had arrived was rather strange. Then again, teenagers did strange things, not everyone reacted to a crisis in a logical manner, and people sometimes reacted to death in strange ways even when they weren't responsible for it. There had been times where it had seemed almost certain that a murder had been committed due to the behavior of someone close to the deceased who'd either found them or had been present at their death, and only later was it discovered to be either natural causes or a suicide.

The lighter haired boy who hadn't said a single word to the police, even to ask where they were going as they were led to a car, seemed to be talking to Rossi. However, he mostly seemed to be saying that he'd killed the victim and that there had been alot of blood and that the blood had been wrong somehow. The other boy shook his head, and called the boy "Thete" in an attempt to get his attention. He'd stopped tapping on the table in that naggingly familiar manner as he tried to get the boy to focus on him rather than on his apparent guilt over his role in the death of the victim. It seemed like everyone had been tapping various surfaces like that without realizing it a few years back, but then suddenly stopped one day as if they'd never gotten into the habit of doing it in the first place.

"It would seem you guys got called out here for nothing." the man from the Sheriff's department who'd come with them said, nodding towards the image on the monitor that they were both watching.

"I wouldn't be too sure." he said. Though the case seemed open and shut, especially since the boy claimed to have killed the latest victim who might not actually be a victim of the Unsub they were looking for despite where her body had been located and clearly looked and acted responsible for the woman's death, he didn't appear to fit the profile. Neither did his friend for that matter.


	3. Chapter 2: Getting Off Gallifrey

"It's locked in the drawer in his workstation. All we'd have to do is pick the lock and we've got it." Theta whispered to his friends as class let out, after quickly making sure that old Borusa wasn't paying any attention to his group. He may be the dead last of the class but that was more because he tended to focus on things other than his studies. The reason he was in the Deca was more for the amusement he provided as the class clown than because he was just as intelligent as the rest of them, despite the fact he wasn't at the top of the class like they were. He wasn't quite the hanger-on that most people believed him to be however.

"I'm not going to have any part in this. Besides, I have some extra-credit lab work I need to get done." a ginger girl who was called Ushas said before turning her nose up to him, breaking away from the rest of the group, and heading out the door. She hadn't quite forgiven him for not asking her to that film festival that some of the art students had decided to throw. The best films in the history of the universe, and he'd had tickets thanks to his older brother Irving who'd acquired them from a friend who had been into the underground art movement.

"We've got to study." Magnus and Mortimus said, looking more scared of the prospect of what he was planning than focused on passing the upcoming exam. Probably because Borusa could be really scary when he captured miscreants in the middle of causing mischief, and there was a good chance they could get caught before things went very far. Sometimes, he suspected that Borusa's rather creative punishments for miscreants were more because the students had gotten caught, rather than that they were getting in trouble in the first place.

"Well?" he said as he turned to his best friend amongst the group who was more than likely the only one brave enough to go along with what he'd begun plotting when he'd seen Borusa seal a certain key in a drawer at his workstation at the beginning of class.

"I don't know how the hell you always manage to talk me into these things Thete." Koschei said shaking his head as he followed his friend down the hallway to their next class. "This better not end with me almost regenerating like that incident in Low Town did."

"Well, I'm not the one who went and picked a fight with a bunch of drunk Shobogans who were more than twice my size." Theta countered.

"I didn't pick it, they started it when they called me small!" Koschei snapped.

"Well, you are small." Theta replied as he drew himself up to his full height which was noticeably taller than that of his dark haired friend.

"Don't you even start!" Koschei snapped as he and his friend made their way into the room in which their next class would take place, no-longer in the good mood he'd been in since he'd answered one of Borusa's trick questions correctly.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this!" Koschei said several hours later as he and his friend made their way into the empty classroom under the cover of darkness.

As they made their way through the darkened room past the abandoned study tables, the bright coppery light of Pazithi Gallifreya shone through the room's only window, illuminating their way in the darkness and eliminating the need to bring in an outside light which would've increased their chances of getting caught despite the fact that the boys had already hacked into the school security system and programmed it to ignore them. Since the administration was well aware of the fact that some students, usually the sort who ended up being thrown out and ending up as Shobogans in Low Town, would and in some cases could hack the security system in order to pull pranks or get up to other mischief after hours, there was an actual person patrolling the hallways as a low-tech backup.

"What the heck is that?!" Koschei asked when something in his friend's hand started making a whistling noise moments after the two boys reached Borusa's workstation where Theta immediately got to work on picking the lock.

"I was bored, and father wanted me to help him put up shelves in the storage room, and mother wanted me to replace the cabinets I damaged during a recent experiment." Theta replied as he held up a heavily modified Sonic Screwdriver that could apparently pick locks as well as drive screws through just about any surface a screw could be driven through, including diamond.

"So, that's what you were doing instead of asking Ushas out." Koschei said, remembering the day Ushas had been sitting around waiting for Theta to ask her to come along to an event he supposedly had tickets for, and how she'd been furious when he'd failed to do so.

"Yeah," Theta said as the drawer gave a small metallic click and he slid it open revealing an object that looked like it was made of clear colored plastic, but was actually technology so advanced it may as well have been magic. The substance the item was made out of was actually crystalline in nature, and the entry authorization codes for a T. T. Capsule were directly written on its internal atomic structure.

"I've got it, let's go!" he exclaimed somewhat unnecessarily, seeing as Koschei was staring at the item with wide eyes.

Both boys fled from the room and the Time Lord Academy as quickly as they could, making their way to where Theta had discovered the T. T. Capsule that the key they'd stolen from Borusa's workstation had been parked. At the moment, the capsule was a rather plain grey cylinder, but when the Chameleon Circuit engaged at their destination, it could potentially become anything.

Nervously looking around to make sure nobody was approaching, Theta used the key to gain entry and both boys quickly piled into the capsule. After quickly shutting the door behind them, they stood there staring at the console that was meant to be piloted by six individuals but could be piloted by as few as one. So far, they had only flown a capsule in simulation, the reality, though nearly identical in appearance to the flight simulator, was so much...more somehow.

"So," Koschei said, breaking the awed silence. "Where should we go?"

"How about we go to that place where the Ginger Beer the Shobogans are so fond of comes from?" Theta said, his hearts hammering in his chest as he moved towards the console as if afraid to touch it.

"Sure," Koschei replied as he moved to take the spot at the controls he'd favored during simulation flights.

Eventually, the fear wore off and excitement took over as their hands moved to follow certain procedures they'd learned in class and it became apparent that they would actually manage to get off Gallifrey. They didn't know where or when they would land on the Tellurian homeworld, but they were getting off of Gallifrey and going somewhere new and completely alien which was exciting enough in and of itself. After the capsule was safely in flight, they made their way to the wardrobe which should have adjusted itself according to the location and approximate era of the coordinates they'd set so they could fit in with the local populace as much as possible. After grabbing a few things they liked, they threw the clothes on. There had been a few false starts with the trousers that had made them wonder how the Chancellery Guards could stand wearing them, but eventually everything was sorted out.

As the two boys were beginning to get bored with their adventure, the capsule finally decided to land. Cautiously opening the door, they saw that they seemed to be in some sort of wilderness area. As they made their way out of the capsule commenting on the massive tree they'd parked next to, they heard the sound of scrabbling feet on rocks as someone ran and a cry for help. Being more adventurous of the two, Theta made his way toward the source of the sound.

Standing at the edge of a ledge and looking down, he saw a figure that resembled one of the Academy's recent graduates in both appearance and age. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear she was a Time Lord, but the blood he could see and smell from where he was wasn't quite right. He wasn't sure what had happened to her, but it was clear that she was badly injured.

"Koschei," he said as he looked down into the dried-up creek bed. "Grab the medkit!"

* * *

**Author's Note: **For those of you who don't know, Theta, Koschei, and Ushas are the nicknames of a certain three Time Lords from back when they were in the Academy. Ushas is The Rani, Koschei is The Master, and Theta Sigma or simply Theta is the Doctor. Magnus and Mortimus are The War Chief and The Monk. As for my calling the TARDIS the Doctor and the Master stole a "capsule", please refer to the Fourth Doctor adventures "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Invasion of Time".


End file.
